Confidence Interval

Confidence Interval estimate of

population mean, s known
A manufacturer of computer paper has a production
process that operates continuously throughout an entire
production shift. The paper is expected to have a mean
length of 11 inches and standard deviation is known to be
.02 inch. At periodic intervals, samples are selected to
determine whether the mean paper length is equal to 11
inches or whether something has gone wrong in the
production process to change the length of the paper
produced. If such a situation has occurred, corrective
action is needed. Suppose a random sample of 100
sheets is selected, the mean paper length is found to be
10.998 inches. Set up a 95% confidence interval the
population mean paper length.

Assumption: 1) population is normally distributed
2) sample is small and is unknown
If we use sample standard deviation s to replace
The statistic t follows distribution, which is called t-
distribution.

Where s is sample standard deviation

s
s
n s
x
t
/

1
) (
2

n
x x
s
i
x
i
Confidence Interval estimate of population
mean, s unknown
Property of t-distribution
1) t-distribution is bell-shaped
2) t-distribution is perfectly symmetric about t=0
3) t-distribution is more variable than z
4) t-distribution is affected by the sample size n
Problem
A major pharmaceutical company has randomly
sampled 14 customers who have used one of
their new painkilling drugs for two months. There
is concern that the drug may elevate the users
heart rate. Each of the customers in the sample
had their heart rate measured after using the
drug for one week. All people had heart rates of
55 prior to taking drugs. The following data were
recorded for the 14 customers.
50 70 60 70 90 72 50 80 85 55 66 70
80 40
Suppose that you have just started
working in the marketing department of the
pharmaceutical company. You are asked
to find out the interval estimate true mean
heart rate at 95% confidence interval.
Was the concerned expressed justified?
Problem 3
The classified-advertisement manager of Daily
Statesman newspaper believes that the portion
of apartment for Sale ads that are placed in the
paper that result in a rental within two weeks is
.9 or higher. She would like to make this claim
as part of papers promotion of its classified
section. Before doing this he has selected a
random sample of 100 apartment for sale ads.
Out of these 80 has resulted positive. What she
will do?
What is the interval estimate of true fraction of
claims at 99% confidence interval?